Dead People Can't Change? Series

Over time, questions are expressed whether as a direct inquiry or by many other means. Some of these questions have a direct effect on our Christian life, our Bible knowledge and the church function.

Because our series on Redemption has been interrupted by vacation, and other things, I thought it a good time to address some of these questions.

In our last lesson, we took a brief look at the essence of Biblical worship. Obviously, there are many things involved in worship, some of which we did not have time to address. In the last lesson, we looked at one aspect of worship that seems to be absent in Church and personal worship.

In this lesson, I would like to direct our attention to a question. Actually, to several questions combined into one:

"How can anyone who is ‘dead’ in sin come to God?

Because if something is dead, it certainly can’t do anything on it own."

The seeming conclusion MUST be that God dictated, before birth, who would be saved and who would not, and the person has no choice in the matter.

It is a good question, based on human logic, and one that is easily answered from Scripture, if we accept what the Scriptures plainly state. Most questions of this nature are easily answered from Scripture, and I will do so briefly.

However, before I address the question, may I point out another matter that is far more important than knowing the answers to all of these "man-made" questions.

Many Believers are falling into one of Satan’s oldest tricks. They are allowing what is very clearly declared and known from Scripture to be held captive by what they, personally, don’t know.

This was one of the very first techniques used by Satan and he is still using it effectively. Those at MBF have seen passage after passage on God’s plan of Redemption and that His Redemption is available to ALL. There are hundreds of passages that deal directly with this and/or indicate it to be so.

However, some find it difficult and/or impossible to accept these many Biblical passages and the truths found in them, BECAUSE they don’t have a good reasonable answer to a question or two. Therefore, because of a human question, that they don’t have the answer to, these many passages of divinely inspired truth are unacceptable.

Look at the first time we see Satan using this particular technique, AND he has not changed his procedure much, over time.

Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said, ’You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?" 2 And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; 3 "but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ’You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ " 4 And the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. 5 "For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

The very first words out of the "mouth" of Satan, to the human race, were to present a question concerning the motive of God’s declared actions. It was and still is a simple matter to question God’s motives, because the human mind can not grasp the totality of God’s greatness.

"Has God indeed said…"

Then Satan suggests a physical answer to an unanswered question regarding God’s motive. The suggested answer appeals to the nature of humanity and our pride of self logic. The suggestion, woven into the question, was that maybe God didn’t want Adam & Eve to be like God. So, if they did some little thing contrary to the clear declared word of God, they would somehow become "like God".

Satan loves to "play" on questions presented to the human mind about the infinite God. Therefore, we get hung up on these questions we can’t answer, because of our limited Biblical knowledge and our limited Spiritual logic. What a tragedy! Because of limited Biblical knowledge, we negate the clear teaching of the Word of God, itself.

In the Garden, there was no question about the fact of what God said to Adam and Eve. However, there was no way, humanly, to answer the inferred question of, "Is that really what God meant?"

The same thing is true of the MANY passages that state that Christ died for the sins of the whole world, and that Christ is the propitiation for our sins and the sins of the whole world. These passages and a few hundred more are equally VERY clear. These passages have the same clarity as God’s instruction to Adam & Eve.